


heritage

by emmram



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, brief depiction of self-harm, the major character death is john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 06:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20205607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: a brief exploration of an alternate universe where it was john that died that november night in 1983. mary returns to the life she thought she'd given up for good, two young children in tow. she copes, because that's what campbells do.-the day dean winchester, all of sixteen years old, picks up a sawed-off loaded with rock salt for the first time, eyes glittering with anticipation, mary can’t help but feel utterly defeated.





	heritage

**Author's Note:**

> written as a fill for a fic prompt meme on tumblr, where i write a number of headcanons for any prompted au. this one... clearly got away from me after a bit.
> 
> WARNINGS: some swearing. brief depiction of self-harming behaviour (cutting).

**1\. **

honestly, mary thought they were going to be all right.

the last fifteen-or-so years of following the winchesters’ exploits has led to the impression that the world is simply crawling with other-worldly creatures and paranormal experiences, but it wasn’t always like this. there was a time when you could hold down a ‘regular’ job, have a home and a family, and still be considered a Hunter. even the people who drifted from case to case worked maybe five or six in a year; often it took months to find and consolidate information, and sometimes even longer to recover from a bad hunt. paranormal attacks necessitating professional extermination were few and far enough in between that the general rule of thumb in the community was to treat every potential case initially as if it had a normal, ‘un-supernatural’ explanation. so by completely cutting ties with her hunting family, mary was reasonably confident that she could lead a normal life with john.

living with john… wasn’t easy; after the accident that took her parents’ lives and nearly took hers, he became even more closed-off than usual–prickly when provoked, and quick to reach for the bottle. this only seemed to worsen when sam was born–he seemed constantly on edge, drank more than usual, and rarely seemed able to hold a conversation with her while looking her in the eyes. this was the point where mary should’ve realised something was wrong, but she had a toddler and a newborn to take care of, virtually alone, and she had neither the capacity nor the time to follow up on vague misgivings.

besides, john always did come around. eventually.

the week leading up to john dying on the ceiling of sam’s nursery, cut open and burning, was filled with unseasonable weather–close and humid days giving way to spectacular lightning storms during the night. their tv–already a piece of junk, to be honest–seemed to be constantly on the fritz. john grew progressively more short-tempered.

still, mary didn’t think that–

that–

(_he was so quiet when it happened. even with his guts spilling out of him and then set on fire, he only looked sad. resigned. mary thought she could stare at that sight till the stars went cold and still never understand why john didn’t say a single word_.)

she stands now across the street from the burning wreckage that used to be her home, a wailing sam clutched to her chest while dean tries to hide himself in the folds of her nightgown. her eyes are burning from shock and the smoke, and she feels dangerously untethered to her body, like she’s watching all of this happen to somebody else. through it all, only one thought achieves any kind of clarity in the fog:

_john knew this was going to happen_.

**2.**

mary has all the puzzle pieces in place, but it takes her longer to put them together than it normally would, for a number of reasons. for one, it isn’t easy to detach herself from the immediate reality of the situation: that john, _her john_, is dead, gone up in flames with the life that she’d sacrificed everything to lead. on top of her grief, and dealing with the police, and curious neighbours, she needs to do something about sam and dean: it’s one thing being a single mother, and it’s quite another being a single mother who is also a Hunter. 

(and a whole another thing being a single mother, a hunter, and a _campbell_.)

she moves in temporarily with an aunt she _hadn’t_ alienated completely when she decided to give up the hunting life. that aunt has two small children of her own, gwen and christian, and part of mary hopes that being with other kids his age would bring dean out of the shell that he’d slipped into after… after. mostly, she’s focussed on her aunt’s library and her extensive list of contacts in the hunting world; it’s been so long since she’s really gotten her teeth into a case.

another reason it takes so long is… well. demons are really, _really_ rare, and a sign that you’re really, _really_ fucked. when mary finally puts the patterns together and realises that they were omens, she is terrified. in her mind’s eye, all she can see is her father’s face from over a decade ago, returning from a rare exorcism. he was drenched in sweat and covered in flecks of blood, but it was the haunted look in his eyes that ensured she would never forget that night: he looked empty, utterly drained, like he’d lost a part of his soul. “i’m never doing that again, de,” he’d said to her mother. 

given what she’s put together here, the demon that killed john is so powerful that its kind hasn’t really been seen in centuries.

she leaves the next day with her children. dean is screaming and crying to stay with christian and gwen while sam just… cries, but all mary can think of is the dead look in her father’s eyes and john, burning.

**3.**

over the next several years, she moves around a fair bit, but always within a trusted network of hunters. she keeps the name campbell–it still carries some clout in the community. sam and dean grow up familiar with the hunting world, even if they don’t actively participate until they’re much older. dean loves it when they all come together for the bigger hunts; he networks so well with others and so quickly that mary can’t imagine he inherited that charm from either her or john. sam tends to ignore these gatherings, preferring to sit in a corner with his walkman and a book. mary doesn’t really begrudge his disinterest in the hunting life–but she often catches him engrossed in her books when he thinks nobody’s looking; hears him excitedly whisper to gwen about ‘revolutionising’ hunting by exposing the supernatural to the world; finds bizarre sketches of chimeras and otherworldly creatures with bright yellow eyes in his room. when she tries to talk to him about any of it, he becomes defensive and… opaque, in a way she definitely does not feel ready to deal with.

when sam and dean are together… well. they squabble like any pair of siblings would, but it’s when they work together towards a common goal that they astonish her. they come up with insights and ideas that remind her of cartoonish lab scenes–bright chemicals mixing in a beaker and producing something extraordinary with a flash-bang. it’s sam that comes up with the idea of making and selling protective talismans on their underground network and dean that works the logistics of it–painfully copying designs from sam’s research and carving and shaping and handling sales and distribution. they’re incredible together and sometimes mary thinks, traitorously, that they seem made for this life. for just a moment.

just a–

there was a time when they were much younger, and the grief and anger were still fresh and sharp, that she would watch them sleep huddled together, and think wistfully of all the hopes and dreams she’d had for her sons. this–a dingy room covered in maps and protection rituals, lines of salt at every windowsill and doorway, a paranoid insomniac with more weapons than common sense keeping watch–was exactly what she’d hoped to spare them from. the sharpness of that feeling faded over the years as she kept herself busy with a steep uptick in paranormal events and in researching the demon that had killed john. her boys, though sometimes different as night and day, seemed well-adjusted, all things considered.

even so, the day dean winchester, all of sixteen years old, picks up a sawed-off loaded with rock salt for the first time, eyes glittering with anticipation, mary can’t help but feel utterly defeated.

**4.**

(are you asking if mary campbell, an expert on demons who’s lost so much of her family to them, ever went to a crossroads, drunk and despairing and awash with grief?

well. she didn’t bury the box. she didn’t say the incantation. but she had them ready, and she wondered if this is what john had felt like–pushed, without consent, into a place where living with all the empty spaces in your head was more terrifying than having the devil stay there. where scrabbling in the dirt in your haste to sell your soul was vastly more preferable to having it eaten piecemeal by guilt.

she knelt in the dirt for nearly an hour before getting to her feet and back to her car. campbells moved on. campbells survived. and though it seemed like she’d spent half her life trying to run from that legacy, she was nothing if not a campbell, through and through.)

**5.**

a couple of weeks before sam’s sixteenth birthday, he comes to her one early morning, red-eyed and dishevelled, and tells her, _mom i can’t sleep_.

she stares at him, dumbfounded, for a few seconds, before instincts kick in and she’s trying to figure out what’s gotten her youngest to come to her like he’s hanging on by a thread. it turns out that he’s seeing things–horrible visions of strangers dying gruesomely–everytime he closes his eyes to sleep. it’s gotten so bad he’s barely slept in days. he went to dean first (and mary pretends she didn’t feel a jealous twinge in her chest at that) but nothing they’ve tried works.

mary tries to help her son as best as she can–on top of sleep hygiene she tries dreamcatchers and protective incantations from at least a dozen different cultures; she calls in favours with psychics who don’t manage to find anything. he still wakes up every night, a scream caught in his throat, sweat pouring down his heaving back. she even gives him a couple of sleeping pills from her stash, unable to stand the scalp-scrabbling, hair-pulling desperation in his bloodshot eyes anymore, the silent plea for her to do something, _please mom, anything, please help me!_

the pills work, but they are a temporary respite. sam collapses at the library one day, convulsing and screaming at nothing at all. he’s taken to the hospital and later admitted to the psychiatric ward; there, to her unending horror, they discover that he’s been cutting himself as well–a dozen newer cuts overlaying smaller, precise, white scars. it’s when dean says, _i thought he’d stopped_, that mary feels the full weight of what’s happened fall on her like a ton of bricks.

she thought they were doing okay in spite of everything, all the while her sons were suffering right under her nose.

sam was _cutting open his own arms_–

mary excuses herself to go be sick, but all she does is sit on the toilet lid, shaking, tears pouring down her face, trying to work herself down from a panic attack.

when she goes back to her son’s bedside, she’s made a decision.

sam is discharged with medication. it takes him a painfully long time to get used to them–alternating between being too strung-up to function and so conked out he’s a zombie–but they seem to be helping. he takes a year off school and dean a year off hunting, and they both go on a months-long roadtrip in john’s beloved impala. he looks much more relaxed when they return, and when he hugs her and tells her that he’s missed her, she feels like she’s been given a second chance.

after graduation, sam decides to go to college in new york, and mary and dean see him off with their blessing.

**6.**

four years later, sam misses his weekly check-in for the first time. just as mary and dean are starting to get worried, he calls her and says, in a choked whisper, “mom… jess–jessica’s _dead_.”

before she can really let the icy horror of that statement wash through her, he adds, “in a fire, pinned to the ceiling… mom, please. _i don’t know what to do_.”

mary does.

in a remarkably steady voice, she says, “i’ll be right there.”


End file.
